


Some Downtime (Finally)

by SeveralSmallHedgehogs



Series: Soft Mighty Nein [1]
Category: Critical Role
Genre: Flowers, Fluff, Gathering Flowers, Gen, I don't know how to tag this it's just a nice quiet fic, Mighty Nein as Family, Rain, The tiny hut, naps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 11:40:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18387716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeveralSmallHedgehogs/pseuds/SeveralSmallHedgehogs
Summary: The Mighty Nein have left Xorhas with nothing too pressing to do, and they get sidetracked by a valley full of flowers and then take a nap. It's some quiet time they desperately need and definitely deserve.





	Some Downtime (Finally)

**Author's Note:**

> It's a nice day here, and I was listening to Studio Ghibli piano music. Specifically [this.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPSRJ0CBqBw)  
> (I know I have a couple fics to work on, but this was written as a break from a paper and I deserve it too.)

 It had been a while since The Mighty Nein had had any time to relax. Between becoming pirates and rescuing Yeza, they’d been going without breaks for a very long time.

Maybe that was why, as the eight of them were cresting a hill on the way back to Felderwin, Caduceus just… stopped. He was towards the back of the group, so a few moments passed before anyone noticed. Beau paused and looked back. “Caduceus?” she asked. “You all right?”

He didn’t respond right away. He was gazing out across the valley laid out on their right, a bowl of flowering fields dotted with the occasional craggy tree. The colors were chaotic and varied, with no rhyme or reason to the arrangement. Just how they were supposed to be. A breeze came up off the grass and ruffled his hair, and he smiled. “I’m fine,” he said. He could smell the flowers on the wind, yes, and he also smelled the dirt warmed by the sun, and the leaf litter moldering under a tree, and a distant hint of a rainstorm approaching from nearby.

Yasha moved to stand next to him. “There are so many different types of flowers here,” she murmured. “I’d forgotten.”

Jester popped up on her other side. “Do you want help gathering some?”

“I’ll help,” Beau added.

Yasha gave a quiet smile. “I’d like that,” she said.

Beau immediately went skidding down the hill, nearly eating shit a couple of times in her eagerness to gather up some of the wildflowers.

“I know some of these!” Jester exclaimed, pulling a small yellow one out of the ground. “Mama got a bouquet of these once! They smell really nice. Fjord! Come smell!” She waved the flower at him, reaching down with her other hand to pick some more. Fjord hesitated, and then headed carefully down the hill towards the others.

Back at the top, Caleb wordlessly took a seat and looked around. “We should keep a lookout,” he murmured to Nott. Frumpkin, sensing that they wouldn't be moving for a while, hopped down form Caleb's shoulder and climbed into his lap.

“Sure,” Nott said. “I’ll watch this way, you watch that way?”

“That sounds like a plan.”

Nott headed to the other side of the hill with Yeza, and they sat together on the grass. Nott leaned back on her hands. Yeza copied her, tapping her hand with his pinky. She smiled, and they tangled their fingers together.

Yeza inhaled, filling his lungs as far as they would go, and then exhaled again. They’d rescued him a while ago, but it seemed as if he was still trying to rid his body of the air he’d been breathing in all that time he’d spent under the earth, buried like a dead thing. “I never thought I’d see this again,” he whispered.

Nott squeezed his hand.

           

On the other side of a hill, Caduceus had taken a seat next to Caleb, with his elbows on his knees and his amethyst staff resting on the grass between them. Caleb glanced at him. He’d never been all that good at reading expressions, but he thought he had a handle on this one. “Are you all right, Mr. Clay?”

“Oh, I’m fine.” Caduceus gave him a brief smile. “A little homesick, I suppose.”

Caleb made a low sound of acknowledgement and turned his gaze back to the rest of the Mighty Nein. Jester had roped Fjord into helping with the flowers, and they were accumulating a good number of them, sorted into small patches on the ground.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “Perhaps… now that we have some time, we could find what you are looking for. You were going East to look for your family, correct?”

“Yeah,” he said. “But we’re going to wrong way.”

Caleb straightened a little. “I’m sure we can—”

“No, it’s fine.” Caduceus waved him off. He paused, as if he was going to say more, but then he seemed to notice something down the hill. “Oh,” he said. “That’s lavender.” He raised his voice to call down the hill, “Jester! I can make tea from the purple ones!” Jester shouted something back up at him, though the words were lost in the wind and the distance. But she seemed excited, and she flounced right over to start gathering up the lavender.

“Caleb?” Nott called from the other side of the hill. “There’s rain coming.”

He twisted around to look. Sure enough, dark clouds were cresting the mountains, and the rain underneath them covered the peaks like heavy fog. It didn’t seem to be moving too fast, luckily, but it would be here soon enough. They had a half hour at most.

He cupped his hands around his mouth and called down the hill, “You guys, there is rain coming. Maybe we should go.” Frumpkin grumbled at being disturbed, but he didn’t get up.

“We’re almost done!” Beau shouted back.

“And you could use a bath!” Jester added.

Caduceus chuckled. Caleb sighed.

Near the bottom of the hill, Jester was filling her arms with blooms. Beau kept finding new flowers and offering them to Yasha, who softly thanked her for each one and pressed it into her book. She did not mention that she already had several of these blooms. It never hurt to have a few more, after all. Fjord wasn’t sure which ones to pick; Jester had to keep pointing him over to new patches. Eventually she gave up and set him to gathering up lavender for Caduceus, since that, at least, was easy to identify.

“I think this can be made into tea, too,” Jester noted, plucking buds out of a clump of clover. “I’ll bring them up to Caduceus, just in case. We haven’t had new tea in so long!”

Yasha nodded. “He does make very good tea.”

The rain started at a drizzle about fifteen minutes later. The skies had been gradually darkening over that time, and Caleb had gotten out his spellbook and started casting the spell for the dome. He made it grass-green from the outside, hoping it would look just a little less out-of-place. There was nobody around for miles, but he preferred to be prepared.

Nott noticed Caleb casting and brought Yeza over to sit inside the radius, smiling and telling her husband, “Watch this, sweetie.”

As the rain picked up the rest of the Nein joined them. With all the flowers they had brought, the inside of the dome smelled like a florist’s shop. The bubble stopped the rain, though, so the group and the flowers all remained dry.

“That looks super cool,” Beau remarked, watching the water slide down the sides of the bubble. The rain made next to no noise on the bubble, but the sound of it hitting the grasslands around them made a calming sort of white noise.

“We might be here for a while,” Yasha murmured, her eyes on the clouds.

“We could take a nap,” Jester proposed.

Caduceus nodded. “A nap sounds just right.”

There was nothing in particular to do, and nowhere to be, and they weren’t going anywhere until the rain stopped, anyway. So, with many other choices but none quite so pleasant, the Mighty Nein—plus Yeza—arranged themselves in a pile under the dome. It was a little cramped—people's legs and heads were sprawled all across each other, but most of them were so used to it they hardly paid any attention anymore. And Yeza got to snuggle against his wife, so any arrangement was fine by him.

And in that manner, the group settled in for a nice, long nap.

**Author's Note:**

> I might come back and add details here and there later, but here it is for now.
> 
> Find me on tumblr [here!](http://severalsmallhedgehogs.tumblr.com/)


End file.
